to set his
pride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one,
then to another; she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs.
Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him as
well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that
appetite was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to his
purposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilled
burningly to a smart in his admiration of the man who could be so
magnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he, the more
pitiable. He drank a drop or two of self-pity like a poison, repelling
the assaults of public pity. Clara must be given up. It must be seen by
the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of his
own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in the
muscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara must be
given up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one
whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes
in his bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the second
wife of an old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And were
it publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old
Vernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in shame, part in
desperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances,
espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in its
judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of
self-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it
requisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not think
if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.
Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced at
her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her a
permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention to
give her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinary
tattle.

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
opened his mouth and shut his eyes."

You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that
he had no desire to harm her. Some gentle anticipations of her being
tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise
the radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been
insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never have
surrendered her. Mor